Four separate government agencies have to approve your property before you can legally rent it short-term in Palm Beach County. None of them will tell you about the other three.
The state collects sales tax. A different state agency issues your operating license. The county runs its own lodging tax, entirely separate from the state. And the county tax collector issues a business tax receipt you can't even apply for until the county tax account already exists.
Most owners find out about the fourth one after they've already taken bookings.
This guide covers all four — in the order they have to be done, with current costs and deadlines. It's the same checklist we run when we onboard a property.
Four registrations apply everywhere in Palm Beach County. Two cost money, two are free, all four are mandatory for a whole-home short-term rental. Depending on which city you're in, there may be a fifth — that's covered further down.
Two of these are prerequisites for the other two, so doing them out of order means starting over.
That gives you two short chains: state sales tax leads to the DBPR license, and the county tourist tax account leads to the business tax receipt.
You can run both chains at the same time. Most owners run them one after another and add several weeks to the process for no reason.
If your city requires its own registration, that goes last — it generally asks for proof that the state license is at least applied for.
Start at the Florida Business Tax Application. Create a user profile, then complete the application for renting living or sleeping accommodations. Register under whoever legally owns the property — your own name or your LLC — matching the deed.
Have ready:
When it's approved, save your Certificate of Registration, your certificate number and your business partner number. Allow three business days before checking for an approved number.
Then enroll separately for electronic filing and payment. Your registration login and your tax filing login are two different accounts — this catches almost everyone.
Filing: log in each assigned period, file the return, pay, save the confirmation. File every period even when you owe nothing. Returns are late after the 20th of the following month, and electronic payments cut off earlier than that date.
Cost: no application fee.
This is your operating license from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Without it you aren't legally renting, no matter which taxes you've paid.
Pick the right application: a house or townhouse uses Vacation Rental – Dwelling, a condo uses Vacation Rental – Condo. Choose "Apply for a New Vacation Rental," create a DBPR account, and for a single owner-held property select the Single classification.
Have ready:
Some entity types require additional ownership disclosures. Some buildings require balcony inspection documentation.
What it costs. A full-year initial application is $170 license plus $10 education fee plus $50 application — $230. A half-year initial application is $90 plus $10 plus $50 — $150. Renewal is $170 plus $10, or $180 a year.
Palm Beach County's renewal date is December 1, and the half-year cycle begins June 1. Because billing follows the county's renewal calendar rather than your application date, a new license does not necessarily run a full twelve months. Apply in October and you're renewing in December.
Palm Beach County collects its own lodging tax, through its own portal, on its own schedule. Paying Florida sales tax does not cover it, and the state will not tell you this.
Register on Palm Beach County's tourist tax portal, verify your login, then apply for a new account as the owner. Applying as the owner means you skip the agent verification step.
Have ready:
Use the name shown on your property tax bill. Save the account number the county assigns you — Step 4 won't work without it.
Cost: no registration fee and no annual account fee.
Filing: monthly, in the same portal. Select the property and month, report revenue and exemptions, pay, keep the confirmation. A month with no bookings still requires a return.
Once your tourist tax account number exists, apply for the short-term rental business tax receipt through the Tax Collector. The form asks for your Property Control Number, your tourist tax account number, the account owner's name, the rental address, whether you're renting the entire property or home sharing, and your email.
One detail worth knowing in advance: the form states that the tourist development tax account owner must complete and sign it. A manager or filing service can prepare the application, but the signature has to come from the account owner.
What it costs. If your business starts between October 1 and March 31, it's $33. Between April 1 and September 30, it's $16.50. Renewal is $33 a year, due September 30 — and the discounted half-year payment still rolls into that same September renewal.
The receipt is specific to the property and non-transferable. It does not follow you to another address.
Unlike the county's general business tax receipt process, this short-term rental application does not require zoning approval.
Everything above is the same for every short-term rental in Palm Beach County. This step is not. There are 39 municipalities in the county, each with its own rules, and a county business tax receipt does not satisfy a city requirement.
First, find out which jurisdiction you're actually in. Your mailing address does not tell you. Large unincorporated pockets carry Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, North Palm Beach, Boynton Beach and West Palm Beach mailing addresses while sitting outside those city limits — different rules, different fees, sometimes no city layer at all. Look your Property Control Number up on the Property Appraiser site and check the municipality field before you assume anything.
Then check two separate things, because they're often confused. Most cities require a business tax receipt from anyone operating a business inside city limits, and renting a property is operating a business — that requirement usually has nothing to do with short-term rental specifically. Separately, some cities run their own short-term rental rules on top: registration, inspections, occupancy and parking limits.
A state law caps what cities can do here. Florida Statute 509.032(7)(b) bars local governments from prohibiting short-term rentals or regulating how long or how often you rent. The exception is ordinances adopted on or before June 1, 2011, which are grandfathered — and the Attorney General has advised that the grandfather covers only provisions that have stayed materially unchanged since then. Several of the stricter rules still on the books around the county survive only on that basis. What is not preempted, and what cities do enforce, is registration, occupancy, parking and noise.
Send us your address and we'll check your current registrations against all four requirements — what's in place, what's missing, and what's about to expire. No charge, no obligation, and the answer is yours whether or not you ever work with us.
If you'd rather not deal with any of it, we handle the whole thing for the owners we manage: all four registrations, both monthly filings, and both renewal deadlines. You approve it once and stop thinking about it.
Three things sit outside it, and all three can stop a property cold.
Your specific zoning district. The city table above covers the general position. It doesn't tell you whether your particular parcel is zoned for it, whether an overlay or historic district applies, or whether there's a cap on your building. That's a parcel-level question.
Your HOA or condo association. State preemption restrains cities, not associations. A community can prohibit short-term rental through its own documents regardless of what the city allows, and that restriction is generally enforceable.
Occupancy, parking and noise limits. These are explicitly not preempted, they vary city to city, and they're what code enforcement actually acts on.
We work through all three property by property before a listing goes live.
Last verified September 2026. Fees and deadlines are set by the agencies named above and change without notice. This guide is informational — confirm current requirements with each agency before filing. Digsify is not a law firm or a tax advisor.
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